Hard Habit To Break
by Beckles1987
Summary: Castle is always there when Beckett needs him, ALWAYS. He's prevented her from getting shot on more than one occasion...what if, instead of wasting precious seconds on a double-take, Castle recognised the sniper's scope straight away? 3x24 spoilers.
1. Please Don't Leave Me

A/N: From the amount of fics on here I can see that I'm not the only one who can't wait until September 19th. There are a lot of post-finale fics on here so I thought I'd do something different. Please let me know what you think.

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><p>"<em>If you're lucky, you find someone to stand with you."<em>

As Castle looked away from Beckett and out into the graveyard a flash of light caught his eye, like sunlight glancing off a window…or a sniper's scope.

"Kate!"

Without a second glance or a moment's consideration of other possibilities, he sprang towards Beckett, shoving her to the floor with an outstretched hand as the shooter squeezed down on the trigger.

Everyone hit the deck. The civilians screamed, the cops pulled their guns and searched for a target.

"Shot fired!"

"DAD!" Castle could hear Alexis's frantic cries, and those of his mother, but they seemed further away than they should have been. Beneath him Kate was breathing oddly, her eyes were wide and glassy.

He hadn't been fast enough. He'd failed her.

"Officer down!"

"Get an ambulance!"

Castle moved to get off Kate and gasped at the burning pain that suddenly ignited on the right side of his chest. His black shirt was sticky and clung to him, the strength left his arms.

He hadn't failed her.

"You're not hit." He gave her a slight smile and then coughed, tasting blood as he tried to clear his throat. Gingerly, Kate rolled him on to his back. When she took her hands off his chest, her white gloves were soaked in red. Beneath the suit, his black shirt gleamed wetly in the bright sunlight.

"Lanie! I need you!" Esposito might not let her move from where they were crouching but the M.E was Kate's only means of helping Castle survive the bullet he had taken for her, the one he had warned her was coming.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to be, Kate thought as she undid his jacket, tie and top shirt button. Writers shouldn't be protecting homicide detectives. Castle shouldn't have to die for her.

Oh god, if he was actually dying…she didn't think she'd recover from it. It was too much after Royce and the Captain, Castle meant too much to her, more than she cared to think about.

"Don't…let them see this, 'Lexis and…" Kate nodded, she knew Ryan was standing by Castle's family and would protect them, not only from any more bullets, but from sights nobody should have to see. She removed her jacket, intending to put pressure on the wound but there was so much blood she couldn't see where the wound was. Leaning over him, she took two handfuls of his shirt and pulled.

"If you…want me…naked…"

"Castle, shh…" Kate pulled again, buttons flew past her and she saw his wound, no, _wounds_. There was a neat round hole on his side, under his arm, the entry wound…and a larger, ragged hole just to the right of his sternum where the bullet had burst out of his body. It was far too close to the heart. His heart.

"Dammit." Quickly folding her jacket, she put pressure on the two wounds knowing that it wasn't going to be enough unless she got help pretty damn soon. The seconds were ticking by and each one brought Castle closer to his own funeral.

"LANIE!" Castle's left hand found her shoulder, she met his gaze and stared into his eyes to keep the tears from falling. She was not going to cry because he was going to be fine.

"She'll make…hell of a…'tective…jus' like you." The compliment was touching but he couldn't mean to compare her with Alexis and what was happening now, he couldn't mean that he thought he was dying. He took in another pained breath. "You…promised…when I die…" It was almost more than she could bear.

"Castle, please. Don't talk, save your strength."

Lanie and Esposito finally arrived at her side. It wasn't a nanosecond too soon.

"Move over sweetie." Kate gave Lanie the space she needed and went over to Castle's left side, taking his hand in both of hers. The doctor took one look at the injuries and became as serious as anybody at the twelfth had ever seen her. "Javi, keep pressure on." They shared an eloquently concerned look before Lanie turned to the assembled cops and raised her voice. "I need a pen-knife, and as many hip-flasks as I can get. Now." She looked at her friends and thought of all the things she'd have sacrificed to see the two of them holding hands in public, she'd sacrifice all that and more to have avoided this.

"How bad is it?" Kate couldn't keep her turbulent emotions from choking her voice into a whisper; God only knew what Lanie and Esposito saw in her face, tears more than likely.

"The right lung has collapsed because there's blood and air in the pleural cavity. I'm going to put a chest drain in while we wait for the ambulance." The wait wouldn't be long; the sirens were getting closer…but then there were always sirens wailing in New York.

Lanie doused the pen-knife in whiskey from somebody's flask and made an incision between Castle's ribs where the bottom of his lung would normally be then took a pen from her purse to pieces, discarding the parts she didn't need. After using up another officer's whisky stash on disinfecting the remains of her pen, she inserted the transparent plastic tube into her incision. Blood began flowing out as she taped the makeshift drain in place.

Taking his own jacket off and adding it to Beckett's hadn't helped Esposito stem Castle's bleeding. Now that Lanie had finished her improvised surgery, she took over putting pressure on the entry wound. He gave her another dark speaking look. He was ex-military. He knew how this story went, knew just how much blood somebody could lose from their chest. If the EMT's didn't get here PDQ and give Castle some fluids he was going to bleed out.

Kate was coming to that conclusion too, Castle's grip was getting weaker and he was far too quiet.

"Don't leave me, Rick. Rick please."

There was barely any response, his eyes moved towards her voice but not by much.

She squeezed his hand, hard. The force of his personality filled his face and eyes again. It wasn't the only thing his eyes were filled with, but as her face was tear-streaked, she could hardly judge him.

"Stay with me okay?" Her voice broke on the last word and fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. With an effort that must have cost him dearly, Castle took a deep breath. She couldn't bring herself to tell him not to speak, not when it might be the last time. Who was she to deny bestselling author Richard Castle his last words, especially if they were for his family?

His eyes bored into hers as a teardrop rolled past his temple and into his hair.

"Kate, I love you. I love you Kate."


	2. Don't Leave Me This Way

I have not read ANY other stories that have Castle getting shot instead of Beckett. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places or maybe they're just buried under the sheer volume of other Castle fanfics. That being said, I am now aware that this story is not completely original…but it isn't derivative either…other than being derived from the show, obviously. Now that I think about it, I don't know that I've read any post-knockout fics.

If you like this fic why don't you read my other Castle fic The Price We Pay?

Kindly review, even if you don't review kindly...saw that on somebody else's story and liked the wordplay.

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><p><em>"Kate, I love you. I love you Kate."<em>

It was nothing less than a sucker-punch to the heart. The magnitude of Castle's revelation chased every coherent thought from Kate's mind. Nobody else had ever managed to blindside her so effectively

Beckett had always known that Castle was interested in her, Lanie, and Esposito really hadn't needed to point it out. She was, after all, a detective and the man had been pulling her pigtails like a kid with a crush since the day they met, but she had never suspected that his feelings went that deep, that he was in love with his wounded little closet fan-girl of a muse.

By the time Kate's brain was functioning again she had already watched him slide down into unconsciousness, unable to give him any reassurance beyond what he took from her expression and the grip her hand had on his. There was no reassurance for her either. Lanie hadn't mentioned Castle's chances and she had very deliberately not asked. As long as she didn't know what the odds were, she could still act like he was going to be fine; she could keep the protective veneer of her detective persona intact. But she felt the veneer getting increasingly thin, sometime soon it would crack and all the emotions she had rationalised, downplayed, ignored and flat-out denied would come spilling out of her in an unstoppable torrent that would leave her a shaking, tear-soaked wreck, unable to do more than breathe and hurt.

It was much too close to being much too much. The rabbit hole was calling to her again, replaying memories of nights spent sat on her bed hugging her legs and sobbing her loneliness into the knees of her pyjama pants. All her emotional wounds were raw and bleeding like they weren't months or years old and the yawning pit of grief she still carried in her chest grew until she could barely breathe around it. Kate felt a selfish desire to let the abyss have her, to let the guilt and pain evoked by the sacrifices Montgomery and Castle had made for her remove the capacity and hence responsibility for making the tough decisions. Nobody would ask her to look after everybody else if she was in floods of tears and clinging to her dad like he was the last solid thing in the universe. But it was a child's wish, to be held and comforted while the grown-ups faced the scary monsters. She was a grown-up, she was an NYPD detective god damn it, and she would hold her shit together long enough for her to get her partner to a hospital and make sure he was going to live…because she couldn't lose anybody else, and definitely not Castle, not now.

Handguns fired somewhere behind her and she instinctively shielded Castle's head as Esposito leaned over his chest. Nobody shouted 'officer down' again, nobody called for another ambulance. Beyond that she didn't much care. There was a limit to how many people she could let herself worry about right now and with Castle unconscious and bleeding on the ground, her limit was probably one.

"Dad!" Kate looked from Castle to his daughter as she knelt next to her, pale and frightened almost out of her mind. Behind Alexis, Martha was faring little better. Steeling herself against the wrongness of it, Kate put Castle's hand in his daughter's and got up, giving Martha enough room to comfort her son and her granddaughter at the same time. Ryan gave her an inquiring look. Was Castle ok, was she? Being unable to give him the answers he wanted, she ignored him, looking instead at the trees, the grass, anything that didn't immediately remind her of death. She just needed a moment. One moment to put all her fear, her worry and her guilt in a box and lock it up tight. A pair of feet came into her field of vision. Couldn't she have just one freaking moment?

"I thought it was you Katie. I thought I'd lost you." Guilt surged again. She hadn't spared a thought for her father and what he might have gone through seeing her hit the ground. Kate met his gaze and gave him her best possible smile. He didn't look all that reassured.

"I'm sorry dad. I'm fine, I wasn't shot. It's not my blood." Jim hadn't noticed the blood on her uniform, then he looked at her hands and understanding dawned.

"Rick…how, I mean…" Kate shook her head, answering the question before it was asked. No, it didn't look good.

"Katie…" His arms opened to hold her but she knew better, if she let her dad comfort her now she'd fall to pieces and she couldn't afford for that to happen. There were too many people counting on her, there were always too many people counting on her.

"I can't. Not now. Later…soon…but not now." Jim gave his daughter a sad little smile, knowing how often she put the job and other people ahead of her needs, even if she was just barely hanging on.

"I understand detective. When it's time, I'll drive you to the hospital." She nodded her acknowledgement and turned towards the approaching sirens. The ambulance was finally here. Lanie didn't even look up as she filled them in.

"Richard Castle, early forties, GSW to the right chest, entry and exit wounds, hemo-pneumothorax, tachycardia and tachypnea indicating hypovolemic shock…I managed to MacGyver a chest drain out of a pen and some lingerie tape. He needs O2, NS and a level one trauma center."

"He's going straight to Flushing. The OR is being prepped as we speak."

"Good. I know people there."

"You coming with us Doctor…?"

"Parish." Lanie glanced at Kate and Castle's family, nobody objected. "Yes I am." She might have been an ME and not a trauma specialist but she was better trained than the technicians and Castle needed all the help she could give him.

There was an awful air of finality as the ambulance doors closed and the ambulance drove Castle away. Kate couldn't let herself dwell on it though, couldn't let hersef stop and think. She had to keep going.

"Wallis?" The junior detective who had surrendered his desk for use as Castle's perch came over to her wearing his blank cop-face, it needed work.

"What do you need Beckett?"

"Get Castle's family to the hospital in Flushing, the one on Main Street."

"Sure thing."

"Gumball all the way. If you get any trouble, I made it an order." Kate walked the detective over to Alexis and Martha.

"This is Detective Wallis, he's going to take you to the hospital."

"You're not coming?" Alexis looked bewildered. Kate didn't blame her; she shouldn't need to be alright with her dad's friends not rushing to his bedside.

"Not yet. I will be there as soon as I can…but there are things I have to do here. Your dad doesn't need me harassing his doctors, he has you and Martha for that." Kate felt Alexis envelop her in a hug. It did nothing to assuage her guilt, it may even have made it worse because she couldn't hug the poor kid back…she literally had her father's blood on her hands. "If either of you need anything, you call me ok?"

"You won't be long?"

"I'll be as quick as I can. Promise." Having safely got Martha and Alexis away from the scene, Beckett was a little better able to pretend it was just like any other crime scene. She scanned the area for Ryan and Esposito and found them walking in her direction, their cop-faces were better than Wallis's but they were both clearly worried. Kate opened her mouth, intending to cut off any and all exchanges of concern for Castle with a list of instructions, but Esposito got there first.

"Somebody got the sniper…with a head shot. I don't know who. I was too busy covering Lanie to see who was going after the guy."

"I was with Martha and Alexis." Ryan looked like a dog waiting to be kicked, but it wasn't his fault. Beckett knew exactly where the blame lay, squarely on her shoulders.

"I'm sorry Kate." Only on incredibly rare occasions did Esposito use her first name but she knew why. This case was now personal to all of them, not just because it had claimed the life of her mother and two members of the NYPD, but it had put bullets into two members of their team, the second having been shot at the funeral of the first. It was reminding them all that some days, on some cases, however hard they tried to pretend otherwise, they were somebody's friends and loved ones before they were cops.

"Me too Beckett…Kate."

"It's ok guys, I'd have done the same." She should have done the same; she should have been the one doing the protecting. She was the one who'd taken the oath, not Castle. She should have taken the bullet. But she hadn't, Castle had…and if he died for her she was never going to forgive herself.


End file.
